The ballad is here
localised on the Carrick coast, near Girvan. The lady is called a
Kennedy of Culzean. Prof. Bugge regards this widely diffused
ballad as based on the Apocryphal legend of Judith and Holofernes.
If so, the legend is diablement change en route. More probably the
origin is a Marchen of a kind of Rakshasa fatal to women. Mr.
Child has collected a vast mass of erudition on the subject, and by
no means acquiesces in Prof. Bugge's ingenious hypothesis.
JOHNIE FAA
From Pinkerton's Scottish Ballads. The event narrated is a legend
of the house of Cassilis (Kennedy), but is wholly unhistorical.
"Sir John Faa," in the fable, is aided by Gypsies, but, apparently,
is not one of the Earls of Egypt, on whom Mr. Crockett's novel, The
Raiders, may be consulted. The ballad was first printed, as far as
is known, in Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany.
HOBBIE NOBLE
The hero recurs in Jock o' the Side, and Jock o' the Mains is an
historical character, that is, finds mention in authentic records,
as Scott points out. The Armstrongs were deported in great
numbers, as "an ill colony," to Ulster, by James I. Sir Herbert
Maxwell's History of Dumfries and Galloway may be consulted for
these and similar reivers.
THE TWA SISTERS
A version of "Binnorie." The ballad here ends abruptly; doubtless
the fiddler made fiddle-strings of the lady's hair, and a fiddle of
her breast-bone, while the instrument probably revealed the cruelty
of the sister.
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